Marriage with Benefits

“No. They’ll ask questions like how we met.” She stabbed the paper. “Or what made us decide to get married so quickly. Or where we plan to go on our honeymoon. Look at the questionnaire. It’s all there.”

“This is too much like school,” he grumbled and swept a lock of hair off his forehead. “Is there going to be a written exam with an essay question? What happens if I don’t pass?”

“My grandfather gets suspicious. Then I don’t get my money. Women don’t get a place to escape from the evil they live with. You don’t get the Manzanares contract.” She rattled the printed pages. “Pick a question.”

“Can I at least take a shower before spilling my guts?”

“Only if you answer number eighteen.”

He glanced at the paper and stood, clearly about to scram as soon as he recited the response. “‘What do the two of you have in common?’” Eyebrows raised, he met her gaze. Then he sat back down. “This is going to take hours.”

“I tried to tell you.”

For the rest of the day, in between Lucas’s shower, lunch, grocery shopping and an unfinished argument over what Cia proposed to wear to dinner, they shot questions back and forth. He even followed her to her room, refusing to give her a minute alone.

Exhausted, Cia dropped onto her bed and flung a hand over her eyes. “This is a disaster.”

Lucas rooted around in her closet, looking for an unfrumpy dress. So far, he’d discarded her three best dresses from Macy’s, which he refused to acknowledge were practical, and was working up to insulting the more casual ones in the back.

“I agree. Your wardrobe is a cardigan away from an episode of Grandmas Gone Mild.” Lucas emerged from her closet, shaking his head. “We gotta fix that.”

“Nowhere in our agreement did it say I was required to dress like a bimbo. You are not allowed to buy me clothes. Period.” Knowing him, he’d burn her old outfits, and then what would she wear to the shelter? BCBG and Prada to work with poverty-stricken women? “That’s not the disaster.”

“You dressing like something other than a matronly librarian is for my benefit, not yours. What could possibly be more of a disaster than your closet?”

It was disconcerting to have that much Lucas in her bedroom, amid her familiar mission-style furniture, which was decorating an unfamiliar house. An unfamiliar house they would share for a long six months. “Do you realize we have nothing in common other than both being born in Texas and both holding a business degree from SMU?”

He leaned his jean-clad rear on her dresser, and Dios en las alturas, the things acid-washed denim did to his thighs. Not noticing, she chanted silently. Not noticing at all.

But therein lay the problem. It was impossible not to notice Lucas. He lit up the room—a golden searchlight stabbing the black sky, drawing her eye and piquing her curiosity.

“What about bourbon?” he asked. “You drink that.”

“Three things in common, then. Three. Why didn’t I look for someone who at least knows how to spell hip-hop?”

His nose wrinkled. “Because. That’s not important. Marriages aren’t built on what you have in common. It’s about not being able to live without each other.”

First clothes. Then declarations à la Romeo and Juliet. “Are you sure you’re not gay?”

“Would you like to come over here and test me? Now, darlin’, that’s the kind of exam I can get on board with.” His electric gaze traveled over her body sprawled out on the bed, and she resisted the intense urge to dive under the covers. To hide from that sexy grin.

“Save it for tonight, Wheeler. Go away so I can get dressed.”

“No can do. You’ve maligned my orientation, and I’m not having it.” He advanced on her, and a dangerous edge sprang into his expression. “There must be a suitable way to convince you. Shall I make your ears bleed with a range of baseball statistics? Rattle off a bunch of technical specs for the home theater system in the media room down the hall? Hmm. No, none of that stuff is specific to straight men. Only one way to go on this one.”

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